Forest Hiker

When the first loggers arrived in Oregon they were daunted by the overwhelming vastness of the forests that they beheld. The pine forests of Maine and Minnesota had not withstood their onslaught, but here before them lay a swatch of conifer wilds that extended from Alaska down to California. The western portion was mostly populated by Douglas Fir trees blending into the Redwood forests in the south. East of the Cascades and Sierras a wide belt of pine forests lay scattered over most of the western states from the Canadian border down to Arizona and New Mexico. But it wasn’t just the size of these forests that gave the perennially overconfident lumberjacks pause, it was the density of these forests. These enormous trees not only blotted out the sky as they rose majestically hundreds of feet into the air, but between them thick growth of vine maple, rhododendrons, saplings, devils club  and dense bushes prevented access. Here in this moist  terrarium the trees grew so close together that in a single acre more than five times the number thrived than did in five acres of the gnarliest forests in Maine or Michigan. Indeed, parts of this coastal forest system would later be recognized as the only temperate rainforest in the world, with vegetative density far exceeding any other jungles in the world. Paul Bunyan and Abe had finally met their match in the Pacific Northwest.

The earliest Oregon logging, no doubt began with Lewis and Clarke’s sodden cutting expeditions to gather logs for their shelter on the rainswept Clatsop plain. Four years later the early founders of Astoria were also busy chipping away at the forest fringe to secure material for the rain drenched American trade outpost of Astoria. But none of this represented commercial logging such as the timber industry had practiced from Maine to Michigan.

The first commercial skirmish of man against tree in Oregon’s wet northwest corner has been laid at the feet of Clement Adams Bradbury. As Stewart Holbrook, the familiar Northwest chronicler of this logging era tells it,

“Shortly after noon on the fifteenth of January, 1847, Logger Bradbury, fresh from the York County, Maine, stepped up to a might old fir that grew by the Columbia River some twenty miles east of Astoria, Oregon and hard by the new sawmill of W. H.H. Hunt. He observed the tree’s butt, which was eight feet in diameter, and he looked upward with something of awe to a top that seemed near the clouds.

But Bradbury was a logger. He spat on his hands, took in the lay of the land, and notched his undercut. When he had cut about sixteen inches into the tree, he was surprised, then alarmed by a “copious flow of pitch that would nigh fill a hogshead barrel.” So great was the run of pitch that the amazed Bradbury quit the tree. He returned to it next day, however, when the pitch flow had ceased, and finished the job. According to John Minto, a noted observer of the time, Bradbury soon became “one of the best axmen and loggers along the river.” He learned to cut his stumps high”.

The early loggers soon saw that this was logging on a different scale. Their past experiences did little to prepare them for the density of the woods, the roughness and sogginess of the soil. Despite the near constant rain, the rivers of the Pacific Northwest were not well suited to floating rafts of wood downriver, although this traditional approach was used on a number of inland rivers, such as the Clearwater in Idaho, and elsewhere in the North Cascades. But throughout much of the region the rivers were small and shallow. Transporting the logs over icy roads or on sleighs was also not feasible in this temperate climate. Even the horse drawn big wheeled carriages that could lift the big Minnesota pines off the forest floor to be dragged out, didn’t work in our extremely muddy and rough terrain.

So the loggers soon turned to that ancient precursor of the bulldozer, the ox. Here in the Northwest they were referred to as “bulls” and for the next fifty years these primeval beasts did most of the logging west of the Cascades. But even with these industrial- strength pulling machines, the huge logs that they sought to extract from the slopes above the Columbia River tended to get buried in the soft ground, bringing even the most determined team of bellowing oxen to a standstill. And to avert getting mired, the loggers soon learned to line the route with smaller logs laid across the drag route thus keeping the logs from sinking into the soft soil. This came to be called a “skid road”.

They say it was a sight to behold. Imagine a big cut through the forest. The oxen have churned the ground into a soupy mess, and all along the shaded alley logs have been laid across the muddy ground to form a log road. By now they are sunk deep into the muck and are scarred from the passage of behemoth logs being dragged across them. In the distance you can hear the colorful profanity of the bull whacker threatening to get really creative with their entrails if the bulls do not “lean on her”.

Grunting with indignation the oxen begin to descend the muddy avenue straining forward in a stately procession of muscular exertion. Along side the “bulls” the bullwhacker strides alternately cajoling, caressing and castigating his team – jabbing them with his goad stick when all other exhortation fails. The red, black and spotted brutes have now gotten the enormous load moving, sliding over the sunken logs. Running just behind the oxen and in front of the rumbling load, the skid greaser pours thick black oil on the smoking cross logs to reduce the friction. In his recollections of the early logging, Stewart Holbrook remembers the old timers huddling around their camp stoves and decrying the day that steam engines drove the oxen from the forest. To these pioneer bull loggers the sight of these massive creatures pulling impossibly huge logs out of the primordial muck was one of the noblest sight they’d ever seen.

The “skid roads” crisscrossed the upper slopes of the forest, but as they approached the bottom of the slope they all converged along the banks of the Columbia. At the river’s edge the area was a wet and dismal battle zone of converging skid roads – a wasteland of mud, wood, water and littered all around with the industrial detritus left by the loggers. No wonder that the term “skid road” would come to be adapted to “skid row” a term used to describe the tidewater haunts of the poor and destitute found throughout the emerging urban centers of the Pacific Northwest.

The steam engine would indeed transform logging beginning at the sawmill and eventually the pushing deep into the forest logging operations. Hereabouts, it all began  when Messrs. Reed, Abrams and Coffin recently arrived from New England in 1850 and set about demonstrating their new sawmill technology in a clearing south of the growing community of “Portland”. In this clearing that also served as a casual camping ground of several transient Indians group, they set up a boiler and the steam driven sawmill. The Indians hearing that the new arrivals were going to demonstrate a machine that could cut wood without using water, were also eager to watch this spectacle. It soon turned into a festive occasion, according to contemporary accounts. The women donned their dentalium beads and the braves gathered standing stoically wearing their Cinook-style conical hats.

Undoubtedly, they saw the smoke coming from the stack and probably heard the sizzling steam in the boiler. But it appears that they were wholly unprepared for the the lumberman’s traditional way of starting out the day’s work with a steam sawmill. As the operators let loose with the steam whistle, some two hundred Indians fled into the woods in utter panic. It was days before they returned to the vicinity of the mechanical monster with the infernal screech. Despite its frightening appearance the efficiency of this new technology soon helped Portland to thrive, as it strove to But with the efficiency of the steam sawmill at their disposal Portland soon thrived.

But steam technology was big and cumbersome and it would require  a lot of tinkering before these whistling monsters would invade the forest. But the vision was there and soon there were several innovators trying to adapt the steam engine to the task of pulling the wood out of the swamp. The first to succeed was John Dolbeer, a partner in the Eureka-based sawmill of Dolbeer & Carson. Dolbeer was a gifted mechanical engineer who was convinced that using a steam engine in the forest would be far more efficient than the slow process of marching oxen in and out of the woods. Throughout the sixties and seventies he worked on trying to adapt the steam engine, and finally in 1881 he built a new machine that would forever change the way logs were pulled out of the forest.

The new steam engine had a vertical boiler, a single cylinder and a horizontal engine with a drum. Dolbeer bolted the new machine to a sled made of timbers and had the oxen drag it into the forest. The bull whackers were amused by the notion that this pathetic contraption would displace even one yoke of bulls. The story goes that the bullwhacker sat on a stump chewing tobacco and making derogatory comments. But then Dolbeer cinched up one of the vast redwood logs. Next he opened up the engine and engaged the drum. The log is said to have jolted up and was soon bouncing its way toward the steam donkey. I don’t know if the bullwhackers realized it at the time , but this demonstration spelled the end of bullock logging.

But what no one realized at the time  was that it would usher in a whole new system of logging that would literally turn the process on its head. No longer would the logs be dragged downhill to the water, but with the introduction of motorized winches the logs would soon be logged uphill to loading platforms perched on the top of ridges. In the history of logging and forestry the development of the steam donkey was the equivalent to the invention of the printing press. It was a “disruptive” invention that made everything that came before obsolete!

It can be said that the steam donkey gave birth to modern logging. But more importantly, this new technology enabled yet another wave of  inventions and process improvements that carried the industry into its modern incarnation. The first of these was the development of “ground lead logging”, whereby the logs were dragged, or “yarded” along the ground to the spot where they would be loaded for the trip to the saw mill.But it wasn’t long before someone came up with an even better system, or “high lead logging”. Instead of dragging the logs along the ground they designed a method for hauling them with one end suspended above the ground to keep it from getting stuck. To do this they had to select a tall well situated tree to use as the “high-lead tree”. From the top of this spar they hung a pulley block and strung a cable through it to the steam donkey. In this way a log could be hauled to the loading area with one end in the air, staying free of the stumps and the underbrush. This new approach gave rise to one of the most celebrated jobs in the industry, the “high rigger”. He would strap on a big belt that he looped around the tree, on his feet were boots with special claws for gripping the side of the tree, and from his belt hung his saw. Continuously moving the belt up the tree as he climber the high rigger would eventually stop after ascending about 200 feet. Here he would proceed to cut the top of the tree off. This was an incredibly dangerous job and therefore it garnered the most prestige in the lumberjack hierarchy.  High riggers were known for performing all kinds of antics after successfully removing the top of the tree without killing themselves in the process.  Several were reputed to have stood on their heads on the top of the decapitated spar, while other with less classy tastes took advantage of the great height to drench their fellow loggers. But not all were so lucky. In 1930, the St. Helens newspaper reported on the tragic case of Guy V. Nightingale, who while in the employ of the Clark Wilson Lumber Company in the vicinity of Camp Wilark fell 125 feet to his instant death. It appears that when he attempted to cut the tree top, the tree split and his belt was instantly severed. He was seen to clutch the tree for an instant, but then fell to his death.

Soon someone had the bright idea to top two spar trees and rig them both with pulleys and thus was born the sky-line system that is still in use today. It worked like a looped laundry line with logs dangling below the aerial relay. In this way the logs were lifted into the air and could be zipped up and down slopes, across canyons with great speed and efficiency. Trains and later trucks would complete the modernization of logging, but the twentieth century transformations deserve their own blog.

In the words of one 19th century  pundit, “You have to let daylight into the swamp before corn and potatoes can grow.” Through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Americans idolized loggers as symbols of the rambunctious American determinism that triumphed over this primeval forest.  Loggers were our outrageous shock troops that cleared the swamp to liberate land for “Johnnie Farmer.”

After the bitter battles that have raged between the timber industry and our environmental community beginning in the 1970’s it’s hard to recall that we once idealized the rugged  the lumberjack. But it wasn’t so long ago that I remember visiting the Oregon Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York to marvel at the red flannel shirted men that danced across the floating logs. I was so enthralled that I came back repeatedly to sit through their logrolling competitions, the displays of precision falling and the audacious way they scrambled up the bare trunks to perch high above us in the humid New York sky. It was my first encounter with this strange place called Oregon, and the smell of all that wood stayed with me, until the day that I decided to move to that mysterious state out on the far extremities of this continent.

No matter what you think about the falling of trees, bear with me for a while, as I take you back to the early years of the twentieth century, when everything we did in America was a sparkling success, and few had any doubts about the rightness of our course. We were blessed by being in the right place and at the right time, and our national spirit was so bursting with enthusiasm that we seemed to succeed at everything  we touched – or so we thought. We never slowed our enthusiastic pursuit of progress, production and our manifest destiny. And our loggers blazed their way westwards from Maine all the way to Oregon and Washington, where the timber stood so thick it could never be entirely cut – or so we thought.

Logging in North America can be traced back to 1631 when the first sawmill was assembled from equipment imported from England at the newly established community of South Berwick, Maine. In those early days there was no distinction between the so-called “lumberers” who felled the trees during the winter months and the “sawyers” that processed them into planks during the summer. By the end of the 1600’s, the settlers had begun to attack the forests of Maine with such enthusiasm that the British authorities banned logging the best pines and “okes”.  These were marked with a Broad Arrow and reserved exclusively for Royal Navy, but enforcement proved impossible as the Northeast and then Maine soon became the center of America’s emerging shipbuilding and wood products industry.

The invention of the circular saw in 1825 led to ever greater specialization that effectively split the industry, separating those that operated the sawmills from the loggers that supplied the raw materials that they used.  And it was this group of rugged characters that would would eventually enter the pantheon of American mythology as the outrageous heroes that literally cut their way through the untamed wilderness to make the continent safe for the pioneers that followed in their wagons. If it was the US cavalry that cleared the Indians from the plains, it was the lumberjacks that cleared the valleys and hillsides to make way for Johnnie Farmer. It was said in those days that “you have to let daylight into the swamp before corn and potatoes can grow.” And unlike the Mountain men that led the pioneers across the mountains only to see their way of life vanish in a mere 30 years, the death defying lumberjacks barely paused before launching into the seemingly inexhaustible forests of the Pacific Northwest.

This exuberant phenomenon emerging out of the Maine forests was first captured by C. Lanman, whose 1856 book, Adventures in the Wilds in the United States, describes these early loggers  as “a young and powerfully built race of men…generally unmarried, and though rude in their manner, and intemperate are quite intelligent. They seem to have a passion for their wild and toilsome life and judging from their dresses I should think possess a fine eye for the comic and fantastic. The entire apparel of an individual consists of a pair of gray pantaloons and two red flannel shirts, a pair of long boots, and a woolen covering for the head, and all these things are worn at one and the same time.”

Stewart Holbrook famously described them as follows, ” Of, say, a crew of fifty green loggers going into the woods in October, about half would find the life too rigorous. They would soon quit and leave. Of those remaining the less alert and sure-footed would be struck by falling timber or crushed flat on a log landing. The spring drive downriver, the most dangerous of all woods work would surely remove a few more. Once the drive was in, two or three others would die of acute alcoholism or in saloon brawls. As for the few survivors, they were immune to disease and you couldn’t kill them with a pole ax.”

Most of the large scale logging in the 19th century took place in Maine, but around the turn of the twentieth century the big operations were already moving on to the virgin forests of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Logging was best done in the winter, and it was cold in those early forests. The men worked up to fourteen hours out in waist high snow that drifted up amongst the towering black trunks.  It was savagely cold in those dark woods, with the timber crackling and booming as the arctic chill gripped the very marrow of the forest.

It was said that “the trees shuddered and quaked when a man with an ax walked among them”. But once a falling wedge had struck home and the tree’s equilibrium began to waver, a deadly hush would sweep through the branches, and the forest would hold its breath as the great giant shuddered, and then went swishing down amongst its brethren to deliver a shuddering blow so profound it was felt more than heard for miles around. After that a silence would fill the empty space and seep outwards to hang heavy above the bluish snow drifts.

Given the extreme cold most loggers sported thick shaggy beards that covered their exposed faces. Those that didn’t would remove the offending growth using the only razors they owned – the glistening blade of their sharpened axe. Like mythical warriors these rough hewn heroes cherished their axes and would bed down clutching them to their chests, to protect them from the elements. Indeed, the lumberjacks’ camps were crude shelters that barely kept out the elements.  The seams between the logs were stuffed with moss and the roofs were covered with bark. The beds were double and triple-decker wooden shelves covered with hay or hemlock boughs. Alongside the bottom tier of bunks ran the “Deacon’s Seat”, a split log bench that ran the entire length of the cabin, along two sides.

In a design reminiscent of Indian long house construction, the fire pit was located in the center of the room, set in sand and stones, and situated under an opening in the roof. Near the door was a grindstone whose nightly spinning would hone their axes to such a wicked edge it split the cold in two.

Throughout the long winter nights these New England lumberjacks would patrol their rough forest tracks pouring water on their icy roads which would permit them to slide their logs down to the banks of the local rivers. And there the logs would accumulate until the thawing snow and warming temperatures would break the icy grip on the waterways. Once the spring flood was running high the loggers would discard their axes, launch their logs and leap aboard on to the undulating carpet of timber – poking and prodding as they drove their logs downriver to the mills.  The “rivermen” that mastered the art of riding the logs down these tumultuous rapids were revered by all who came to see them sweep down the wild rivers astride a flood of logs.  They used to boast about these “rivermen” that you could throw a bar of yellow soap into the water and they would ride the bubbles to shore. Those that survived even a few seasons of successful river runs were veritable cats on the logs. The river made certain of that. If you fell into the boiling white water, awash with a myriad of churning logs, swimming was more pointless than prayer.

The Spring river run was the climax in the loggers’ annual cycle when they risked death to deliver their precious cargo and make their annual rendezvous with what really mattered: beautiful women, violently strong liquor and uproarious brawling. Their fighting was less about settling scores than it was for the sheer delight of it. Guns and knives played little part in these protean struggles, but gouging of eyes and the chewing ears earned high praise. It was also highly appropriate  for a logger to stomp on his prone opponent in his nail studded “calked boots” tenderizing his torso from neck to groin. This classy move was referred to as “putting the boots to him” and it usually left the recipient somewhat worse for wear.

If you drive out of Portland headed north towards Scappoose and the Oregon side of the Lower Columbia, you are likely to travel along Yeon Avenue. The pronunciation of this road is usually a foolproof way to tell longtime Portland residents from more recent arrivals. The latter are likely to pronounce this name as if it had no “y” and sounded like a long period of time, an “eon”. But the mildewed old timers will omit the “e” and refer to this industrial thoroughfare  as “yon”.

But few will understand how fitting it is that this broad arterial dedicated to the transportation of heavy industrial goods should honor one of Portland’s most successful bullwhackers. And Jean Baptiste Yeon (1865–1928) certainly was one of the most successful bullwhackers that Portland, and the Pacific Northwest ever saw!

When the first loggers arrived in the Northwest they realized that the size of the trees , the rough terrain and the sodden conditions made it impossible to log with horses. They realized that they needed enormous strength and a strong steady pull.  Consequently, they quickly traded their horse teams for oxen. For half a century “bulls” as the loggers referred to them, did most of the heavy lifting in the Pacific Northwest. Often they would hitch five, six and even ten yokes of bulls together to pull the massive trunks of Oregon’s millennial giants down “skidroads” to the river’s edge. The skidroads were made from felled tree trunks laid side by side to form a kind of track that would prevent sliding logs from getting hung up on rocks or buried in the mud.

In a memorable passage in The Holy Mackinaw, Stewart Holbrook, a well known chronicler of Pacific Northwest history, recounts the scene:

“First, you heard the loud, clear call of the bullwhacker’s voice echoing down the forest road that was more like a deep green canyon so tall and thick stood the fir; and the clank of chains and the wailing of oxbows as the heavy animals got into the pull and “leaned on her”. And then the powerful line of red and black and spotted white would swing by with measured tread, the teamster, sacred goadstick over his shoulder, walking beside the team, petting and cursing them to high heaven by turns, the huge logs coming along behind with a dignified roll”.

The Bullwhacker reigned supreme during the bull-team era; he was the rock star of woods crew. Paid three times as much as an axman, he was the unquestioned authority figure handing down judgement on everything from women to the mysteries of the universe. The bullwhacker presided over the skidroad with a firm and practiced hand, but his explosive profanity could lash any man and beast into unearthly exertion. When profane persuasion failed to arouse the necessary force, his “goad stick”, a slim piece of wood some five feet long with a steel brad in one end, served as the final encouragement. When neither goad stick nor profanity roused his brutish charges to their utmost, a bullwhacker was known to leap upon a bullocks’ back stomping down the entire length of the team, piercing their hides with his calked boots and “yelling like all the devils in hell”.

Such a man was “Johnnie” Yeon. Arriving penniless from Quebec, he borrowed enough money to purchase land and a team of bulls and proceeded to cut his way into the hills above Cathlamet. In winter he kept warm bunking alongside his bulls in their so-called “hovel”. He was up at four to feed his huge companions. He worked as a bullwhacker, an ax-man, a cook, a timekeeper and a foreman. He was known to fell a two hundred foot fir tree just for the exercise. He liked to keep in shape, and after twenty years he became one of Portland’s most successful timber barons. In 1911 he built Portland’s first “high-rise” building. The Yeon building was 15 stories high and was clad in glazed terra-cotta, and culminating in a colonnade  on the top floors. At the time it was Portland’s tallest building.

While other buildings have long since surpassed Jean Baptiste’s creation, the north-bound road that bears his name still carries loads worthy of his ox-teams! Like his charges, Johnnie was a giant of a man that helped carve this state out of the primeval forests. These days his story is seldom heard, but once known is seldom forgotten.